keyboard

Razer just announced two new gaming products at the World Cyber Games 2007 grand final in Seattle. The gaming peripheral maker revealed the Lycosa, a new gaming keyboard, and the Piranha, a new gaming headset. Once again, Razer keeps its themes of naming its mice after snakes, its keyboards after spiders, and its audio equipment after fish.

The Lycosa keyboard takes characteristics from both the Razer Tarantula and the Microsoft Reclusa (built with Razer technology) and combines them. Like the Tarantula, the Lycosa features Razer's claimed Ultrapolling 1ms response time and like the Reclusa, the Lycosa's keys light … Read more

We could have told them this would happen. Japanese design firm Hacoa, which made wooden keyboards for Marubeni Infotec, has shockingly found that consumers weren't exactly beating down their maple doors to buy the sylvan peripherals. It probably didn't help that they were going for 50,000 yen, or about $400, apiece.

And we're not so sure about its alternative strategy either. Akihabara News reports that Hacoa plans to sell kits that would have consumers assemble their own wooden keyboards. It would be one thing if this could be done for a fraction of the price, but … Read more

When we reviewed the original G15 gaming keyboard early last year, we were quite impressed with the vast array of programmable buttons and the innovative LCD GamePanel. However, we had doubts on the usefulness of the latter as it required gaming titles to write code to use the GamePanel.

The new G15 gaming keyboard did away with the flip panel and embeds the display above the keys instead. Otherwise, gaming support has increased and now World of WarCraft, Battlefield 2142 and Quake Wars are able to utilize the panel for vital stats. Frankly, at S$169 (US$111.01), it'… Read more

Thermaltake has got to have one of the oddest names for a high-tech company--it sounds as if it should be making long underwear, not computer hardware. (Given some of its products, it may already be qualified.) And its "Soprano" line of equipment make its branding all the more weird.

Still, Thermaltake's new USB keyboard would look good on Tony's desk, as the black brushed aluminum model would be complement any number of gunmetal finishes. Beyond its good looks, according to Fareastgizmos, the latest member of the family features keys that are ergonomically designed with contours shaped … Read more

Inspired by Tony Targonski's wonderful heat map of the dirt distribution in his keyboard, I decided to take all my keys off and give my own keyboard a good cleaning yesterday. (Honestly, everyone should do it once a year, unless you've got some crazy, futuristic, self-cleaning device.)

As I painstakingly scraped off all of the gunk, I learned two things. No. 1: I'm a proud PC gamer. Most of the dirt was concentrated under W, A, S, and D. No. 2: I love my keyboard and I hate my mouse. My keyboard provides endless creative potential, while my mouse helps me click on stupid links. I never clean my mouse.

In order for we keyboard lovers to make the most of our wonderful input devices, we need good launchers, i.e. apps that let us run programs or load Web sites without clicking that silly mouse.… Read more

We wish we had more information on this keyboard--in fact, we'd settle for just about any information on it. As far as we can tell from its product listing, this is a USB keyboard equipped for handwriting recognition with a built-in touch screen and stylus.

It's described as an "identity" feature, which implies that the handwriting would be used for security, but it could also just be used to read foreign language characters or custom symbols, not unlike a Chinese-made mouse that we saw earlier this year. What we do know is that it's marketed … Read more

When computer peripherals such as external hard drives become designer items, you know that the world has turned upside-down. So it comes as little surprise that more attention is being paid to keyboards--after all, for some people, they get more physical attention than loved ones.

But $28,000? That does seem a bit much, even in this Age of Wretched Excess. Still, someone is sure to pay the egregious price for one of Fairlight's "XYNERGI" keyboards (excuse us: "programmable controllers"). See the video below for a demonstration.

Whatever it's called, this monster is not … Read more

Spying on other people's PCs can be such a hassle. For one thing, you've got to find a way to surreptitiously install key-logging software or other surveillance hardware. But the clever blokes at U.K.-based Spy Warehouse have come up with a practical alternative: Why not give the subject a new keyboard already equipped for espioniage?

Its "Covert Keylogger Keyboard" is a Microsoft board outfitted with a 2MB storage device that SCI FI Tech says can track up to 2 million keystrokes. There are just two problems: Only one of them has been made--for 215 … Read more

Perhaps more than any other piece of office equipment, the computer keyboard has been constantly morphed to keep its operators' hands out of the doctor's office. In the perennial battle against RSI, we've seen versions that break in two, glow in the dark and even skip the keys altogether. But instead of the hardware options, others continue to pursue solutions in the keys themselves--and a generation that goes beyond the QWERTY alternatives may be just beginning.

New Standard Keyboards, for instance, has developed an alphanumeric version that includes only 53 keys rather than the usual 104, according to … Read more